‘Plagiarism’ case against former V-C Pental goes back 5 years
Written by Aditi Vatsa |
New Delhi | Posted: November 26, 2014 3:17 am,
The Indian Expres,New Delhi,26-11-14, News Line,Page 3
Former Delhi University vice-chancellor Deepak
Pental’s arrest on Tuesday for his alleged involvement in a plagiarism case
might have come as a surprise to many, but this case was first taken up in the
local court at least five years ago.
In 2009, P Pardha Saradhi filed a private complaint
before a Delhi court under various sections of the IPC, including forgery,
criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust.
Saradhi, who now teaches in DU’s environmental
studies centre, alleged Pental had plagiarised his work on genetically-modified
Indian mustard, with the help from a research scholar, KVSK Prasad, the
other accused in the case.
Saradhi told Newsline that Prasad had worked under
him on his PhD thesis and went on to conduct research under Pental. “In connivance
with Pental, the research scholar took the seed of codA transgenic Indian
mustard developed by my team under India-Japan Cooperate Science Programme.
Pental allowed Prasad to use this GM seed for carrying out further research,
fully aware that all GM material are put under the tag of ‘Hazardous’ under
Environmental Protection Act (EPA),” Saradhi said.
“This was shown as work carried in Deepak Pental’s
lab during 2001-2004. Verbatim sentences, exactly same data and similar figures
and numbers were copied from the report submitted by us to DST under
India-Japan Cooperative Science Programme,” Saradhi alleged.
In 2009, following a complaint filed by Saradhi in
Delhi University, a committee was set up to look into the issue. Alleging that
the university did not act on his complaint, Saradhi sought information through
RTI requests.
He said: “When I saw that the university was not
acting on my complaint, I tried to seek information on the action taken on my
complaint under RTI Act, but the university still did not take any action. It
was only after I sent an appeal to the appellate authority that a committee was
formed to look into my complaint. It gave a clean chit to Deepak Pental.”
The counsel for the accused, Samrat Nigam, told
Newsline that the committee’s report had indeed given a clean chit to the
former V-C.
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